Marion was working longer hours at the school, coming home later than her children, usually with more work to do, more phone calls to make and emails to write.
“This doesn’t make any sense—this is a part-time job!” she’d wail. She often left the house with watery eyes, with two mascara-tinted teardrops under the lower lash line, like Pagliacci, not because she had been sad or angry but because she hadn’t been able to find her keys. Nathan would help her search the house while she wept and opened and slammed shut drawers. He would eventually find the missing keys, and rather than praise him for this accomplishment, she’d shake her head, still inconsolable. Nathan told his wife that he lost his keys all the time and it never upset him much. And Marion said that that was very nice, but he didn’t have any real responsibilities, now, did he?
Marion was at her most biting and mean after she had lost something.
That was the last time he had called Denise. He needed Denise then as he needs her now.
Nathan remembers that bad time in his marriage, which he thought was over and done with. Marion, without therapy, had righted herself, and Nathan did not ask how. A good memory floats up, and he hopes it will soothe him back to sleep. He closes his eyes and relaxes his body to prepare for it. A few weeks before Christmas. It’s dark and he’s coming home from seeing Denise. The streetlights are on, and snow lightly dusts the cars, the sidewalk, his shoulders.
His house glows yellow from the interior lights. Nathan sees his younger daughter at the window on the first floor. She must be standing on the sofa, something she’s not supposed to do, but from the outside looking in, it’s charming. She presses her hands against the glass. He waves to her, and she waves back, but she’s looking beyond him at an old Volkswagen Beetle, painted pink with multicolored polka dots, inching through the snow.
He lets himself in, and his house smells like dinner. It’s clean. He exhales. Jane runs to him and allows herself to be picked up, but still looks behind him at the car.
“What do you see, Janey?”
“A car. A silly car.”
“A silly car?”
“I want one.”
He puts her down, and she returns to stand on the sofa by the window. Nathan finds Marion in the kitchen. He says, “Jane’s got a car thing now?”
“I know. I bought her a Barbie sports car for Christmas,” Marion says, and she seems proud and happy. She reaches for Nathan and keeps her arm around his waist as she stirs a simmering pot of gravy and tells him about the Christmas gifts she’s purchased for her girls that day. Nathan never learns the reason for Marion’s pride. He believes it is a kind of psychological breakthrough and does not question its mechanisms. Instead he peers into the pot of gravy.
Nathan never knows that Marion is celebrating. It has been a four-month-long close call at the school, but she has won. Shelley, the suspicious head of the PTA, has been deactivated; instead of accusing Marion of embezzlement, she will be getting a messy divorce, and Marion is her new confidante. Marion is reveling in her moment of victory. She has once again kept her crime from this house. She can stay.
Headlines That Matter
Headlines tell of a missing boy in the subway. The missing boy can’t talk. The city is on the lookout for the missing boy.
It is a story about disability. It is a story about incompetence. It is a story about a story. It is a story about one family. It is a story about one school. It is a story about one borough, then five boroughs. The boy loves the subway and that changes everything.
Jane studies the photo of the boy in the newspaper open on the kitchen table. He looks like he could be her age, even though he is a teenager. His shirt is buttoned all the way up, and Jane imagines his mother buttoning it for him.
The Palms are late and the bus has to be sent away once more. Jane is going to school with her sister again on the subway because they are so late. Nathan drinks black coffee at the kitchen table. He gives them granola bars for breakfast. He couldn’t sleep, he says, but it’s fine.
“I’m going to look for the boy on the subway,” Jane says, and her father and Ginny say okay and go back to their coffee and granola bar.
In the subway station, Ginny sees his face on a poster. Have you seen this boy? the poster inquires.
“Is this the kid you were talking about?” Ginny asks. “I thought you were making it up.” She reads the fine print while the F train roars in.
On the train, Jane looks left and right for the missing boy.
“He’s not here,” she says, disappointed. “Should we put up posters like that for Mom?”
Jane says this loudly, and the passengers of the car look at her over their smartphones, iPads, and folded newspapers.
Ginny shakes her head, not only at the idea but at Jane’s decibel level.
“What?” Jane says.
Ginny tells Jane to shut up.
Jane lets go of the train pole, says, “Excuse me,” and slips away from her sister into the morning rush-hour crowd. Ginny chases her. The two sisters change the tenor of the train, and Jane is apprehended trying to change cars.
“Have you lost your mind?” an older man asks Jane. He detains the little girl by gripping a strap of her backpack until her sister can reach her. Jane kicks him in the shins.
The man swears, and keeps Jane at arm’s length so she can’t kick him again but doesn’t let go of her backpack. It is Jay Street, and Ginny takes her sister’s arm and pulls her off the train, away from the angry man.
Jane reaches up and scratches her sister’s face. Three red lines appear from her temple down to her cheek. Ginny grimaces but does not release her grip.
“I hate you,” Jane says.
“I hate you too,” Ginny replies.
The Business Center of the Days Inn
Marion visits the business center of the Days Inn, which consists of an old PC and a black-and-white printer. It suits her fine. She has a computer again after days of not having a computer, and her fingers itch for the keys. She’s sitting down, she’s tapping away, she’s looking at Ginny’s Facebook page. Her online routes are familiar. She checks the news, reads the school’s PTA blog, looks up her husband’s ranking on Amazon, and it hasn’t changed; she Googles his name to see if anyone has mentioned him. They haven’t.
She types “women who embezzle” into the search bar, and a list of articles appears. Most she’s read before. The topic has not been adequately explored, and the current research contains none of the nuances one might hope for. Recently a woman embezzled over $400,000 from a cement factory in Biloxi. The author of the article sneers at the car the woman chose to buy herself with the stolen money. It was a new car, but beige and practical. The article implies that it’s funny and quaint how the woman chose to spend the embezzled money. Marion Palm bristles in the Biloxi woman’s defense. It seems like a fine car. Very reliable.